A unique South Asian oral history archive has been put online for the first time. The collection features more than 300 recordings of interviews with people who witnessed Indian independence and the final days of the British Raj.

The collection is owned by Cambridge University’s Centre of South Asian Studies and contains more than 500 hours of audio material and 10,000 pages of interview transcripts.

The recordings were made in the 1960s and 70s, but use of the original cassettes and reel-to-reel tape had been restricted over fears that their overuse would cause irrevocable damage. Their transfer to digital files by Mr Ivan Coleby has been three years in the undertaking.

The recordings include first-hand accounts of meetings with Mahatma Gandhi, and testimonies by freedom fighters whose acts aimed to force an end to British rule.

There are also interviews with ordinary people such as doctors, missionaries, farmers and police officers, who provide personal reminiscences of the Empire, Indian independence, and partition.

Of particular interest are the first-hand accounts of Gandhi's civil disobedience and non-cooperation campaigns by people who knew and helped him. Some accounts refer to the nationalist leader’s ‘desperation’ when his campaigns failed to provoke a reaction, in particular his 1930 Dandi salt march. But others describe the momentum which Gandhi provided the independence movement.

Other insights provide details of the violence which accompanied some independence campaigns. Freedom fighter B V Gogate discusses his failed attempt to assassinate the acting Governor of Bombay, Sir Ernest Hotson, in July 1931, in revenge for the execution of freedom fighters in Sholapur. The collection also features an interview with Sir Ernest himself, reflecting on the attempt on his life.

Elsewhere, interviews with a broader spectrum of the Indian populace reflect different experiences of the British reign and subsequent fight for independence. British women married to diplomats or soldiers describe how they adapted to life in remote rural areas or Himalayan jungle. Missionaries recount the hands-off approach of the British administration in areas such as Hyderabad, which had devastating consequences in times of famine.

Dr KM Greenbank, archivist at the Centre of South Asian Studies, told Varsity: “We are delighted to have completed this project and very grateful to the AHRC for their support – this brings into use an exciting and unique resource, shedding light on the personal experience of life in India in the mid-twentieth century.

"When our film collection joins this resource in on our website in March we shall be making it possible to examine the daily lives of those living in India in the past in a way which has not, hitherto, been possible”.

The entire collection is being made available in full, for free, as streamed audio at http://www.s-asian.cam.ac.uk. Themed collections of excerpts are also available for download from the University's iTunesU channel and at http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/special/20091205/. Master digital copies of the recordings are also being stored on DSpace, the digital archive repository within the University Library. The original tapes will be packed and stored in refrigerated conditions.